It is that time of year which everybody loves. It is the holiday season and you will start to see a lot more people express good attitudes and wish everyone else a happy new year. As a matter of fact it may be hard to think that with all of this much goodwill in the air there is someone out there who is trying to take advantage of that. But the fact is no matter what time of year it is there are always going to be bad guys around every corner and they will try to stalk their prey at anytime. It does not matter what time of year it is, the bad guys like to work all year round and you always have to be on the lookout for them.

As a matter of fact this time of year is a very good time when it comes to black hat hackers. This is because there are so many people online around this time and they are looking for a bunch of deals for their Christmas shopping. The retailers really go full throttle around this time of year and they want to be able to make as much money as they can. This time of year may be known as the holidays to most people but to people in the financial industry it is known as the fourth quarter and it is the most important quarter of the year. They want to be able to make as much money as they can throughout this time period so they will offer deep discounts wherever they can.

And since you have so many people online trying to advantage of these deep discounts that are being offered, it is the perfect time for a black hat hacker to try and strike. With so many emails and so much different types of information being sent back and forth it is hard for the average person to be able to discern what is real and what is not. They do not know which emails are really offering a real deal and which ones are fake and trying to get something out of you. Normally you would tell a person that if a deal seems to be too good to be true that it probably is and there are some bad guys behind the offer. But at this time of year all of the deals seem too good to be true and it is hard to tell which one is a bad deal and which on is a good deal.

That is why as a consumer, you have to keep a more vigilant eye out than you normally would. Yes, the bad guys are going to be out there in full force and you have to make sure you are more prepared than ever. When you go to visit websites you have to make sure that the domain is correct and that it matches the website that you thought you were going to. If it does not match the domain that you thought you were going to then you should leave right away without clicking on anything. And if you get an offer in your email account then you should not click the link in the email. What you should do is type the website in directly and go to it that way. You never know where a link in your email account is going to take you. So make sure that you do it the right way so that you know where you are going.

When it comes to the holidays the bad guys do not take a day off. So make sure that your common sense does not take a day off as well.